For all it’s loud nonsense and convoluted plot points, in the end “Ismart Shankar” is a solid, fun, and entertaining film. I got exactly what I wanted from it, and in an age where so many films try (and inevitably fail) to infuse their story with some half-handed social message, it’s refreshing to see a film that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to trick you into thinking it all means something. But be warned this is not a film for everyone, this is a completely local mass movie from start to finish and if you don’t like those kind of films you certainly won’t enjoy this. However, despite that this is also a film that has surprisingly interesting ideas about memories and relationships, anchored by a career best performance by Ram Pothineni, and a class effort from Puri. Though it may be very easy to dismiss a film like this, underneath the surface you can see the great amount of effort that was put into making it. There are a lot of things that don’t work in the film, but I can’t deny that the things which did work came together to form an inspired and genuinely funny film.

Easily, the best part of it was the character of Shankar, who seems to embody the filth and energy of Hyderabad brilliantly. Everything that comes out of his mouth is exactly something I would expect to hear from a local “hawla”, and some of the one-liners in this film are bang-on hilarious. One of the reasons why this film kept me entertained so much was because I simply wanted to see how Shankar would react in different situations, and the scene where he finds out that he has been experimented on like some lab rat almost had me to the ground. A lot of credit needs to be given to Ram Pothineni who really pulled this character off, it’s easily one of the best performances I have seen him give and I really hope he goes on to try more different characters than the usual milk-boy hero trope which he occupies. Even Puri, who has also been experiencing a creative downfall as of late, hits the nail on the head with this mass character. Even the music by Mani Sharma and the choreography perfectly encapsulate the local energy of Hyderabad, my favorite being “Bonalu”. Its almost as if all the people working on this film were just trying to create one hell of a fun time, and it works.

However, I was also quite surprised with how well this film handled the concepts of loosing your memory and subsequently those around you. I didn’t expect this film to get as deep as it did with that, bringing up questions about what our memories contribute to who we really are. There is also a surprisingly sophisticated conversation about how your environment contributes to who you become, the scene is coated with your expected local talk but underneath it is a well-driven argument for how “hawla” guys are created. And the neuroscience in this film, though surface-level it is, was surprisingly spot on and I found the idea of memory transfer fascinating and maybe even one day possible. It’s things like this which remind me that I am watching a film by Puri Jagannadh, who knows how to perfectly handle a full-on entertainer like this but still have space for innovative ideas and meaningful conversations.

Now that we’ve gotten all the good things out of the way, lets get into some of the things which really irritated me about this film. The first thing is the plot, which is unnecessarily complicated. There are a lot of different strings in the film and as Puri tries to tie them together, it doesn’t work very well because certain points aren’t as well explored as they should have been. For instance, the whole Anand character is sloppy and his contribution to the story at first is confusing to understand. Then there are the action scenes spread throughout the film, some of them are good (like the one in the lab) while others are god-awful (like the one in the abandoned site). Puri Jagannadh has no right to be making such terrible action sequences given his experience in the field but I guess it is what it is. Then there are the female characters, which aren’t actually as bad as I was expecting them to be, but are still pretty one-dimensional.

At the end of the day though, if you are looking for a mindless entertainer, with hyderabadi slang and some interesting concepts, look no further than “Ismart Shankar”. However, if you are the kind of person who doesn’t like loud, crass, mass-movies don’t see “Ismart Shankar” because you will certainly hate it from moment one. This film has a very specific audience, and it’s a pretty solid film for that matter.